Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a joke, and it's funny. Lighten up.
Jokes like these are literally not allowed on HN.
I think I missed that part of the HN guidelines, could you point me in the right direction?
'Rent-a-person who does nothing' in Tokyo receives endless requests, gratitude
131–140 of 244 posts
Re: 'Rent-a-person who does nothing' in Tokyo receives endless requests, gratitude
#132A friendly reminder that Japan's rent-a-family industry was completely fake: https://newrepublic.com/article/160595/new-yorker-japan-rent... Everyone loves stories about how weird Japan is (especially the Japanese), so these stories should be taken with a grain of salt.
Yeah if you just read all these articles about Japan, you'd think that all young men beat off to hentai all day at their parent's home, and that everyone is visiting "love hotels", or buys used panties from vending machines. The media loves to spin up an image of Japan to naive westerners by exaggerating its quirks. It reminds me of HN. If you read HN too much, you might think that you can only write applications in…
We need a new name for this kind of fallacy/bias. It's not new, but more potent and prevalent than ever. Only saucy stories get told, so we think it's all sauce.
Re: 'Rent-a-person who does nothing' in Tokyo receives endless requests, gratitude
#133I can't quite put my finger on how to define "this" but it seems like stories like "this" have been replacing stories of drive and grit in our cultural lore. It's en vogue now to talk about "doing nothing" or making it sound normal that you need to hire someone you don't know to accompany you to visit the hospital, etc. I am sure this is a part of the human experience but is it really a part we need to normalize, ver…
> The reason I say this is because I think the world is a tough competitive place whether we act like it or not. It doesn't have to be, though. I guess the individuals featured in such stories are the change they want to see in the world.
Sorry, but LOL. You can't opt out of competition any more than you can opt out of gravity.
If you aren't "strong" enough to do the hard work, someone else in your town will do it and reap the rewards while you become irrelevant. If your whole town opts out, some other part of the country will do it while your town drifts away into irrelevance and poverty.
If the whole country opts out, some other young and hungry country will take advantage of the opportunities your country passes up, until that country makes your country irrelevant.
Everything we have is because we or our ancestors (whether literal ancestors or the people that built the countries we live in) did the hard work. A few people can opt out and free-ride on others. But if the whole culture opts out, the whole culture will become irrelevant.
Re: 'Rent-a-person who does nothing' in Tokyo receives endless requests, gratitude
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a joke, and it's funny. Lighten up.
Jokes like these are literally not allowed on HN.
At the risk of getting too meta, the words "joke" "funny" and "humor" don't appear on the HN Guidelines[0] page at all. Nothing in there about staying 100% serious 100% of the time.
Re: 'Rent-a-person who does nothing' in Tokyo receives endless requests, gratitude
#135As this is HN, I assume some readers are already preparing pitchdecks to raise funding for the gig economy marketplace to match people who want nothing to people willing to do absolutely nothing for them.
Re: 'Rent-a-person who does nothing' in Tokyo receives endless requests, gratitude
#136The title reminds me of the Japanese strip Rent-a-Girlfriend , and how much it, and several similar ideas coming from Japan seem to express how lonely many of it's citizens might be feeling. Japanese commerce seems to have found a rather big market into treating loneliness. From the existence of Host Clubs, bars where the menu is not only food, but a good conversation with one's designated “host” as well, to cafés w…
> he's unbelievably socially awkward and not in a way that derives humor from it, but is meant to invoke a sense of relatability
Media does usually exaggerate the traits they're attempting to highlight, whether it's bravery or social anxiety. Most people, even if they are popular and charismatic, still feel awkward and anxious sometimes. As much as we talk about how different people are, in some ways we're all the same.
Re: 'Rent-a-person who does nothing' in Tokyo receives endless requests, gratitude
#137A friendly reminder that Japan's rent-a-family industry was completely fake: https://newrepublic.com/article/160595/new-yorker-japan-rent... Everyone loves stories about how weird Japan is (especially the Japanese), so these stories should be taken with a grain of salt.
> Japan's rent-a-family industry was completely fake That's really not what that article is claiming. It's claiming that a particular individual has lied about the industry and made it seem stranger than it actually is and the western media has sensationalized that even further. There absolutely are rental services for boyfriends, girlfriends, mothers, fathers, etc. in Japan, they're just not as bizarre as some of th…
Girlfriend experience-escorts are also not that uncommon outside of Japan.
Bars where one buys a good conversation along with the meal, cafés where the waiters roleplay as one's doting sibling, renting a parent, used underwear from vending machines, maid cafés, maid cafés where the maids are all cross-dressing males, cafés where the attractive male waiters make out with each other for the viewing pleasure of the customer base, cafés where the attractive female waiters wear no underwear, short skirts, and the floors are mirrored — well, that's the joie de vivre that has a big “only in Japan” sticker on it.
The second place with distance is the U.S.A. that at least has cafés where the attractive female waiters wear skimpy outfits, cheerleaders, and bikini car wash — but the rest of the world that has nothing that comes close to this well-inspired madness.
Re: 'Rent-a-person who does nothing' in Tokyo receives endless requests, gratitude
#138A friendly reminder that Japan's rent-a-family industry was completely fake: https://newrepublic.com/article/160595/new-yorker-japan-rent... Everyone loves stories about how weird Japan is (especially the Japanese), so these stories should be taken with a grain of salt.
Yeah if you just read all these articles about Japan, you'd think that all young men beat off to hentai all day at their parent's home, and that everyone is visiting "love hotels", or buys used panties from vending machines. The media loves to spin up an image of Japan to naive westerners by exaggerating its quirks. It reminds me of HN. If you read HN too much, you might think that you can only write applications in…
> you might think that you can only write applications in Rust and Go using K8s, no JavaScript but Typescript only
Pff. Everyone knows Haskell, Idris and Elixir are acceptable, too.
Re: 'Rent-a-person who does nothing' in Tokyo receives endless requests, gratitude
#139Listening intently without injecting criticism, condemnation, or your own complaints/opinions is extremely difficult. In fact, that skill is one of the major tenants of the timeless classic, How to Win Friends and Influence People. This quote is straight from the book: “Any fool can criticize, complain, and condemn—and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.” With iso…
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Re: 'Rent-a-person who does nothing' in Tokyo receives endless requests, gratitude
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Yeah if you just read all these articles about Japan, you'd think that all young men beat off to hentai all day at their parent's home, and that everyone is visiting "love hotels", or buys used panties from vending machines. Firstly, love hotels are a sign of not being lonely. They do not offer a prostitute; those batteries are not included Secondly, I do not gain the impression from that that all do it, merely tha…
BBC loves to fetishize Weird Japan. I know where you come from, but from what I’ve seen this one checks out as western.
How many languages do you speak to confirm this idea?
Do you speak Pashto enough to know that Afghanistan does not take the crown in this, for instance? Do you speak Danish enough to know that Denmark also participates?